


Behind the Masks

by VicenteValtieri



Series: A Thousand Lives Unlived [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Abuse, M/M, Masks, Scars, scarrification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 22:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11344365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VicenteValtieri/pseuds/VicenteValtieri
Summary: Starscream is the Jewel of Vos no longer.





	Behind the Masks

Optimus drove through the canyons searching for the source of the odd readings Red Alert had picked up. It had been a triumphant day for the Autobots, Megatron soundly trounced, and the warlord had left in a fury. 

One would think Optimus would be happy, then, but he wasn’t. It seemed that with these victories, with mechs staring up at him admiringly, as if he was somehow more than them, that he was lonelier than ever.

Red Alert had picked up another Cybertronian on their scans and Optimus, being the only other officer currently not drunk, interfacing, or otherwise occupied, went to look for the other mech. 

The convoy transformed to peer around, searching for the EM field that he could vaguely feel, like a presence that was attempting to hide itself. There was a hint of red and white behind a rock and the Prime stopped. A triangular tip was just barely poking out from behind the boulder. It looked like a wingtip, but the positioning was all wrong. The tip was pointed down…

Optimus carefully, carefully, approached the boulder, peering around it. There was a Seeker tucked into the nook the boulder made with the clifface, servos at his faceplates and sitting in a pool of energon. One wing, the tip hanging out, was twisted. How had he made it this far?

Optimus coughed and Starscream shivered, shaking his helm and refusing to turn. His emblems had a bar branded through them: Disbarred and thrown out. The devil of it was, Optimus couldn’t figure out why. Megatron had been furious when he left the battlefield, Starscream’s left vent had a servo-shaped dent in it where he had been dragged off by his leader, but Optimus couldn’t see why he had blamed the Seeker of all his mechs.

Starscream had fought well that day, faced the Autobots unflinchingly.

“Come out, Starscream.” The convoy coaxed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help.”

There was a whisper into the boulder and Optimus had to crane close to hear it. The Seeker’s damaged vocalizer must have taken a hit or shorted out. “…No one can help me.”

“Then I want to try.” Optimus set a servo on the Seeker’s shoulder. 

Starscream shook his helm again and shifted further into himself, the damaged wing attempting to pull towards the Seeker’s back.

“Please. I won’t hurt you.” Optimus settled onto his lower legs when he realized that he would just have to wait the injured Seeker out. “What happened?”

“Megatron.” The breathy whisper returned. 

“But why?” Optimus shudders at the damage. He would never do this to his men.

“Does he need a reason?” Starscream sighed. “I fired my cluster bombs at him instead of taking my beating like a good little Decepticon.” There’s just a hint of sneer in the Seeker’s unnaturally soft voice.

Optimus pursed his lips. “I’m sorry.” Silence fell over the canyon again. “You’re bleeding, Starscream. If you let me see where, I can patch it.”

“It will stop on its own soon.” Starscream’s sigh comes back. It’s disturbing.

“Not if it’s a major line he nicked. Let me see, Starscream.”

Starscream turns just slightly to show that his neckcables are intact. His vocalizer is exposed and spitting sparks. He keeps his servos over his faceplates pointedly, refusing to remove them. “I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously not fine. Will you stop being so stubborn?” Optimus snapped. “I’m not going to rip your faceplates off.”

“You’re too late for that anyway.” Starscream let his servos fall and Optimus reeled, gasping. Megatron had beaten the Seeker’s face clean out of shape. The pert nasal vent was squashed and flattened, a cheek and his lower lipplate were torn clean away. There were deep cuts and scratches all around his cracked optics. In all, it was a fine mess. 

Starscream covered himself up again. “Just leave me be.”

Optimus gathered him up in his arms, squawking and struggling. “Come on, we’re going to see Ratchet.”

Starscream, predictably, cursed him, his creators, Primus himself, and his convictions, but the breathy, damaged tone took the sting out of his words. When they neared the Ark, he pressed his servos over his ruined face again and tightened his lips to stifle the low moan of distress.

Ratchet and First Aid sobered quickly when Optimus laid Starscream on a berth. The two doctors set to work at once, welding on extra plating, setting the wing back into place. One of the optics could be patched, the other had to be replaced with an Autobot blue lense. The damage was so severe that the two optical housings had been knocked askew and to prevent further damage, Ratchet welded them back into place without attempting to correct the positioning. It gave the Seeker an exotic slant to his optics.

Optimus didn’t leave the medbay throughout the whole operation. Slowly, the Seeker was rebuilt to functional form, but it was far from normal. The welded plating didn’t match the rest of his protoform, it was too light, too silver. His lips were forced into a constant, one-sided, smile, and he could barely move them. He would have trouble intaking energon. The new voice was permanent, even after Ratchet fixed the vocalizer as well as he could. 

When the Seeker sat up, the first thing he did was ask for a mirror. First Aid handed him one and he examined himself for a very long time. “We can paint over the welding, of course. I think we have your color in stock.”

Starscream waved the offer off. “No. I like to know what parts of me are me.”

After that, the Seeker just… stayed. Eventually, he claimed a small space for his own and set up an equally small lab. Blueprints and prototypes were left on Prime’s desk when the Seeker went for a brief flight and Optimus came to the room to leave energon for the Seeker. Whenever he appeared, Starscream was either in recharge or pretending to be recharging. He had made himself a black, glass mask and wore it constantly, though he had to take it off to fuel. The mirror in his closet washrack was shattered and the glass used in some project or another. 

And Optimus worried for him. He had been wounded similarly, early in the war, but he had had comrades, friends. Starscream was alone now. It couldn’t be good for the Seeker, a naturally social frame. 

One day, when he brought the Seeker his ration, he just didn’t leave. Sitting down in a chair, he waited for Starscream to come out of recharge. 

Eventually, the Seeker turned over. “What do you want?” He had been faking recharge.

“To see how you’re doing.”

“As well as can be expected.”

“I suppose I deserve that. How long has it been since you last took a flight?”

“A decacyle, since the last time I left a blueprint on your desk.” 

They fell silent, the Seeker staring at him from behind the glass. He wanted Optimus to leave, the Prime could feel it in the tightly-held EM field. 

“Why are you helping us?”

Starscream’s field twitched. “I have no other place to go.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Nowhere else would harbor me. I would rather remain here.”

“If you could go, where would you?”

“I would return to where I belong.” Starscream paused for a long moment. “It’s not possible. Please, leave me be. I have a reaction that I must monitor.”

“Will you take off your mask?”

The Seeker seemed taken aback. “No.”

Optimus nodded and left the Seeker alone.

But he came back, again and again, and stayed longer, asked more questions. Then, he brought his own ration with him when he came to visit. “Starscream.”

The Seeker no longer bothered to pretend to recharge when Optimus came to see him. He looked up. “Optimus.” His mask turned to the cubes in Optimus’s servos. “Are you not intending to come tomorrow?”

“No, I just thought I would fuel with you, since it’s almost time anyway.” Optimus sat down in his chair and set Starscream’s cube on the table.

The Seeker’s servos were still at their work, they froze when he suggested that. The mask turned to Optimus again. “Please don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?” Optimus opened his battlemask, displaying the damage done to the lower half of his face. He was luckier than Starscream- his vocalizer’s damage forced him to speak in a low, soothing voice, and his lipplates, while stiff, could still move freely, but there were scars and seams where he had had to be patched, time and again, to keep his plates from separating. He could never be fixed. 

As Starscream stared, Optimus raised his cube to his lipplates with a trembling servo, taking a sip with practiced ease. The Seeker looked away and one servo went to the edge of his mask. The digits were trembling as he released a catch and pulled it away. “Don’t stare, and don’t pity me.” He muttered. 

“I’ll do my best.” Optimus replied. 

Starscream set the curved plane of glass down on the table and picked up a cover with a spout set into it. He clapped the cover into place on the cube and sat down on his berth, finally letting the convoy see him. 

It was bad. The contrast between silver and gunmetal grey made him look cartoonish, like a joker or a harlequin. His optics only added to that impression and his lipplates were still twisted and gapping slightly. Optimus’s prediction must have been true, he did have trouble fueling. The nozzle- not unlike a sparkling’s own vessel- was inserted into the gap between the two lipplates and Starscream turned his helm backwards, allowing the energon to pour down his intake.

Optimus tore his own optics away and nursed his cube. As soon as his ration was gone, Starscream set the mask back into place and latched it down. “Curiosity satisfied?”

“Yes.” Optimus didn’t apologize. “Same time tomorrow?”

“… Very well.”

Same time tomorrow became same time the next day and the next. At some point, it stopped being just Optimus in Starscream’s room and became Starscream in Optimus’s as well. Optimus confessed that he often had nightmares about losing the war or falling in battle. Starscream admitted to having nightmares about the beating that had remolded his face.

Somehow, that confession ended with them sharing a berth, recharging back to back. At some point during the night, the Prime always turned over and spooned Starscream. The Seeker didn’t mind. 

“Let’s go refuel in the common room like normal mechs.” Starscream stated suddenly. 

Optimus’s optical ridges jumped. “Refuel? Without our masks?”

“Yes. Come on, let’s go.” The Seeker encouraged.

Optimus would have refused, but it was the first time Starscream had agreed to go out into a space more public than a corridor. It might set him back ages if this outing he wanted wasn’t a success. So, Optimus stood up. “Why not? Come on, let’s get in there before the rush.”

They walked down the halls together, Seeker and Prime, exchanging casual small talk, but there was an underlying tension. It was like walking on thin glass floors. 

They took a corner table and Starscream opened his mask. Optimus followed suit afterwards. They drank and chatted. No one stared too hard, though the looks did burn. Afterwards, Starscream closed his mask again and Optimus snapped his back into place. They went about their day as normal.

They began to be seen together in more public locations. Neither took off their masks more often than necessary, but they were together, talking and taking their activities together.

They were friends.

That changed when Starscream had his worst nightmare yet. He woke the convoy with his sobbing.

Optimus rolled over and rocked him awake. Surprising the Seeker out of recharge wasn’t a good idea under any circumstance. “Starscream?”

Starscream shook against the Prime. One servo reached for his mask, traced the smooth, black glass. “I was considered the most beautiful Seeker in Vos, once. Once, mechs fought for my attention, and I scorned them all. They scrambled after me as if I was a jewel without price.”

Optimus nodded. “Of course, Prince Starscream: Jewel of Vos.”

“Not anymore.” Starscream seemed to deflate. “Never again.”

Optimus’s digits found the catch on Starscream’s mask and popped it open. He drew back the black glass, opening the mismatched faceplates to the air. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. You look very striking now. Perhaps not conventionally beautiful, but physical beauty isn’t really all that important.”

Starscream shuttered his mismatched optics. “Give me back my mask.”

“Not for a moment.” Optimus opened his own. “I see a different beauty within you. It’s here.” Optimus stroked the cockpit over Starscream’s spark. Then, teasing, he added. “The rest of you is all right as well.”

Starscream snorted. “You’re not so bad yourself.” There was a moment of silence where they just stared at each other and then Prime leaned down. Their kiss was broken and difficult: Lipplates that would never work properly again had to twist and force themselves into place. Still, it was a perfect kiss. One that they would remember for the rest of their lives.

 

The next time the Autobots faced the Decepticons, there was a black-masked Seeker with them: Red symbols gleamed below the barred Decepticon sigils. Optimus glanced at him and couldn’t help the surge of emotion he felt. Together, they barreled into the fight.


End file.
